I Am Tired

Dallas has had this on-again, off-again relationship with a fever most of this weekend (starting on Thursday actually) so we decided to take him to the doctor today. I called in sick and we scheduled an appointment with his regular doctor (well the doctor he has seen once since we moved up here, but he is to be Dallas' primary care physician) for 10am. We left the house right around 9:30 only to find of DSHS switched insurance on us and Valley Medical won't take it. So we drive to Covington Multicare Urgent Care and discover some more "fun" things about the new insurance we were assigned to. After some phone calls and me getting close to shedding tears of frustration, finally Dallas gets into see a doctor around 11:30.

Dallas screamed when they tried to take his temperature, he screamed when they tried to look in his ears, he screamed when they tried to listen to his heart (I trust you are beginning to see the pattern). They wanted to take x-rays so I held him down during those. Of course there is a long wait in our room after the x-ray because it has to be developed, I think we all fell asleep (did I mention Dallas didn't give us much more that 3 hours of interrupted sleep last night?). They came back wanting to do a stomach x-ray to verify something they thought they saw in the chest x-ray, they also want to take a urine sample, and probably do some blood tests... It is getting close to 1pm so I tell Cam to take Chelane home and I'll call him to come pick me up (I am thinking around 5pm at the rate this is all going, the x-ray place is WAY on the other side of the clinic).

Of course Dallas won't pee in a cup, so they tape a "wee bag" to him (poor kid) and I need to get him to drink to try and encourage the urinating part... but Cam took the diaper bag with him, doh! After waiting a half hour or something to try to get Dallas to do his thing in the "wee bag" the doctor comes back to talk about all the things we have learned about Dallas today:

1) the fever isn't due to an ear infection... at least I don't think so, I can't be sure because he has some waxy build-up in his ear... but the parts I can see don't look inflamed at all

2) the fever isn't due to strep of another throat inflammation-thingy because his throat looks fine (she got a pretty good view of it with the aid of a tongue depressor while he was screaming his head off when we first got there)

3) he doesn't have any pneumonia that I can see, although his body was slightly twisted in the x-ray so his heart is covering a portion of one of his lungs so it could be in that area

4)he doesn't seem to have appendicitis or another abdominal problem because he laughs when his belly is pushed on

5) he has lots of gas in his intestines and quite a bit of blockage; in short he is constipated (which I wouldn't have guessed, the kid has a BM everyday, more than one sometimes, and he never seems to strain and the BM's aren't overly firm or anything...)

The doctor decides to fore go doing bloodwork but still wants us to get a urine sample (to check for a UTI or any weird bacteria in his system), but we can just bring it back in when he does decide to go. We need to keep the fevers down if they happen and she gave us a prescription for amoxicilin and a laxative, but don't start the medicine until after the urine sample is taken. By now is it close to 2:30, so I call Cam to come get me, we need to get Jadon off the bus at 3:45...
I wasn't able to get to the store until around 7pm to get the prescriptions filled and when I get home Dallas is asleep, when he wakes up he is running a fever so he has turned into Mr. Noncooperative. With Cam's help we manage to Oreo-bribe some fever-reducing medicine and the antibiotics into him but he won't take the laxative mixed up in root beer. We did finally get that into him about a hour later (by making him cuddle with us and telling him we wouldn't put him down until he drank all the pop...).

Luckily Chelane has been her usual way laid-back, I-will-just-sit-here-and-look-cute,-get-to-me-whenever-you-have-the-time self. She had the same sort of cold Dallas did, but hopefully she won't develop a fever at all, she isn't getting amazing food with built in antibodies (provided by me) that Dallas isn't, that may be part of the difference.

Chelane has been in bed for an hour or so now and I just looked over at Dallas and he is finally asleep on the couch... I wonder how long that will last. It is very possible I may take a sick day tomorrow to recover from my sick day today.